


181031

by stanlee



Category: unOrdinary (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I can't do this anymore, Time Skips, Vigilante Remi, Villain Arlo, Violence, Vomiting, i seriously cant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29637441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stanlee/pseuds/stanlee
Summary: Remi falls off of bulidings. And with an old friend. (Remlo Vigilante/Authority AU)
Relationships: Arlo & Remi (unOrdinary)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15





	181031

Remi falls against a brick wall. She’d misjudged the momentum required to bridge the gap to the next building and the brunt impact of jagged clay sends her falling back against the last structure and down the alleyway.

Cursing, she holds out her arms in preparation to grab the fire escape ladder rapidly escalating into view by the second and barely manages to latch onto the edge of the rails, but the sheer weight of the drop coupled with her numbed fingers causes Remi’s grip to slip off of the metal poles as if they were slicked with oil as she scrabbles for purchase against the banister floor.

She has no choice but to drop. And clear a rough, seven foot distance with an undignified landing that results in her bouncing harshly off of a lidded dumpster and onto cement, splat in the middle of an alleyway.

Remi scans her surroundings as she struggles to catch her breath in between labored wheezes.

The dark has made itself present through its silence for the first time that night. There were no security cameras blinking within her radius, no tinny vibrations which meant no phones and subsequently, no people around. The only thing she can sense is the comfortable thrum of electrical currents swiveling up and down the lampposts.

So it was completely safe in the moment for Remi to yank out her earpiece and retch dryly in the space between her palms immediately after that singeing interference finally worms out of her line of hearing.

From where her soaked jumpsuit clings wetly against her skin to how her leg violently throbs as she collapses over her limbs‒ every sensation was just _unbearable._

Remi wants to vomit. She wants to curl into herself fraught like a helical spring, every inch of her coiled in with so much pressure she couldn’t feel anything other than the agonizing strain of tendons pulled too tight, to scream her throat shredded and raw and drown it all away‒ the girl’s ear-piercing shriek as the bullet split into the core of her ribs; the gradual weakening of her twitching muscles as she writhed and whimpered against Remi like a wounded, aching animal. Being unable to do anything but watch the life leak out of her pupils and bloom the lazuline of her shirt russet. 

Remi couldn’t even lie. She wasn’t even strong enough to comply with a dying child’s last wish.

Alarm shoots through her body and Remi startles on the spot, whirling around towards the opening of the buildings, all the hairs on her arms standing upright. The lampposts flicker viciously bright revealing a tall figure donned in a trench coat pressed against the amber glow. There’s a hat planted on their head, ridiculously large, but it seems to be doing it’s job concealing the face of its owner.

“Who’s there?!” Remi asks raggedly, then the stranger steps forward and she decides not to chance it.

Although her ability is wholly exhausted, yet again she lets jagged arches of electricity rush through her arms, ignoring the strain in her temples from aura overexertion, rigiding herself in preparation to fight, to‒

“Hey!” the person whispers harshly, tugging his mask off, freeing a familiar tangle of blonde waves. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s me.” 

All the fire snuffs out of her at once. “Arlo?” 

He makes his way towards her in a hesitant but not unassured pace and she’s eventually greeted with a face drawn with hollowed out edges, the glint in his eyes obdurate like freshly uncut gems. Age hadn’t been kind to Arlo’s softer features, but it’s still very, recognizably him.

This had to be a dream. Remi blinks in disbelief, the image of him splitting into halves, into fourths, into sixteenths; suns refracting in a glass kaleidoscope. 

And then she throws up for real this time, all over the asphalt right next to her. The flood of footsteps that follows reverberates cavernously in her head as she hacks her lungs out, and she thinks Arlo’s hand slots between her shoulder blades, patting her like he was burping a baby. Strangely enough, the ridiculous notion makes tears spring into her eyes.

The creases running through the gravel are starting to grow visible. Remi gathers herself into a kneeling position, swallowing back remnants of bile. 

“Why- What are you doing out here?” 

“I volunteered to take a night shift,” Arlo replies. His hand was still on her back. “My co-worker definitely didn’t mind passing it onto me.”

“Night shift,” Remi echoes, rocking flat onto her heels. She bites back a grimace as a small crescendo of nausea passes through her. “In an abandoned city? What kind of job do you have?”

“There’s a little more to it, but it’s basically like patrolling the area.”

Remi blinks for him to elaborate, but all Arlo does is turn away and fiddle with something tucked behind his ear. 

Something was off. He’s never been the conversational type, but even for Arlo this exchange was a little bit _too_ stilted for someone she’d known from eighth grade all the way through her high school years.

No questions as to why she’s curled up in the middle of an alleyway completely slicked in blood. That gaudy and agonizingly reminiscent Carmen SanDiego hat hiding Arlo’s face underneath shadow despite the fact that he’d removed his mask. 

He hadn’t made a sound when he turned the corner. How had Remi known someone had appeared?

_Fizzt._

She lunges for Arlo’s ear in an instant, fingers closing around the fleshy lobe as well as something too smooth and cold to be skin and yanking, hard, with enough force that when she frees it, for the most vulnerable moment she’s able to budge Arlo’s head. That damn hat topples into her lap in the process and she grits her fist around the ugly thing as she fills the coin-sized electronic in her other hand with so much voltage it pops sparks and fizzles out, dead. 

Remi tosses the fabric aside.

“A headset.” Her blood runs cold as she turns the device over, the familiar flame insignia burning itself into her retinas. 

Arlo’s silent.

“You’re here on a job,” Remi says. “Not going to be able to report an X-Rei sighting to your new friends now, are you?”

His face twists into something reluctant. “Don’t.” 

“Don’t, _what_?” Remi snaps, rounding in on him. “Don’t question why you haven’t bothered to contact me in four years just for this to be the way I find out you joined EMBER? Don’t put up a fight when you turn me in to the authorities? Don’t bother asking why you joined them after what your-” 

Her voice breaks. Remi gasps for breath and tries again. “After what they-”

“Remi.” 

His stare pierces through the mask that would have obscured her identity from anyone else otherwise, eyes sapphire-bright and crystalline like the waves crashing against Lindquist Beach, like the ribbons Remi used to adorn her hair with that currently collect dust in a neglected drawer, the expanse of the sky on the day of the only wake she’d ever had to attend, infinitely, unflinchingly azure and stretching evermore. 

She used to love the color blue.

“The girl,” Remi croaks out. She moves to get up again, leaning pressure onto her left leg. “I’m going back.”

A hand closes in on her again, this time around her wrist. “Do you have a death wish?” Arlo hisses, and the exasperation laced in his tone aches like an old battle wound. “More of my people have swamped the area by now. If you return, you’re not coming back out in one piece.”

_My people._

It’s her leg that’s broken, but the phantom burns from so many years ago scorches against her forearm ferociously as if her skin had never bothered sealing the charred wounds in the first place. 

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she declares flatly, wrenching herself out of Arlo’s grip. “I said I’m _leaving_ , your people be damned.”

“And what do you think happens when you get there?” After all this time, he rises to challenge her, matching her beat by beat like four years of radio silence didn’t stand between them, as if they weren’t operating in each of their respective enemy organizations. “If you’re even able to, on your broken leg. Do you really think they’ll just let a vigilante walk away from a crime scene they caused scot-free?”

He extends his hand out again in an offering. “Quit the heroics this once and let us take care of it. We’re not just going to leave her there.”

“I guess you’re right,” Remi agrees. “They had the decency to bring my brother in a body bag back to me, after all.” 

Something ugly flashes in Arlo’s eyes and he moves to tower over her, the outline of his black coat mingling and blurring in and out with their surroundings. Remi’s never been intimidated by his height before, but plastered against the enveloping darkness he looks like a sleep terror. What nightmares are conjured of. 

“You don’t get to do that.” he speaks coldly, deliberately. 

Remi’s shoulders tense into a defensive brace. “Do what?”

“Shove the blame onto me- onto us,” Arlo growls. “Rei made a conscious choice when he decided to play superhero all those years ago, and he paid the price for it in full. That insubordination was neither of our faults.”

“What- with his _life_?” Bile bubbles up in her throat again at full force. “Forget it.” 

Remi limps forward and Arlo mirrors her action. She shoves him with all the force she can muster to no avail, but he doesn’t even budge. “Move!”

Arlo shakes his head. “I can’t let you do that."

Remi jabs a finger right underneath his chin, electricity lethally sizzling in the millimeter-sized gap of space between her index and his thyroid. 

“And what if I make you?”

The moment she moves in to gap the distance he’s on her immediately, striking in on the flat of her palm and slamming it against the wall with deliberate pressure. The corner of his mouth tugs with pain when crooked streaks of electricity jolt up his arm, but to his credit he doesn’t flinch as he digs her hand deeper into lined brick.

Remi grinds her molars together with enough friction for her jaw to ache, struggling to wrangle out of his airtight grip. Arlo kneels slightly to level himself with her, the glow of the lampposts rendering his complexion sallow. **  
**

“I don’t know how to make this more clear to you,” he says, slowly, and this time there’s nothing even resemblant of anchoring in his voice. “There’s a death warrant hanging over your head.”

A muscle in her leg convulses. “I didn’t know murderers got to be selective with their concern.”

“We’re not killers.”

“Yeah, just night patrollers,” Remi replies tinnily. “I’m sure that’s what your aunt likes to call it.”

Arlo’s eyes flare forebodingly. 

“Didn’t you guys say people like Rei and I had it out for ourselves from the beginning?” she spits out contemptuously. “Well, now that you have an injured criminal under your mercy, come on!”

“Show me the kind of punishment I deserve.”

In this moment, Remi recognizes she could be meeting the ends of all possible ends. 

The reason why someone of his caliber was called here wasn’t for the girl, or even the amp junkie. A customer gone awry‒ that was just an aspect of the business. But some hotshot superhero wreaking havoc in a residential district and interfering with the authorities’s underground activities? They’d be stupid _not_ to bring in a god-tier.

And although her regime works herself to the marrow of her bones, Remi knows the authorities haven’t slacked on a day of training either. At her prime, she still doubts she would even be able to knock a sizable dent into Arlo’s barrier if he’s been under EMBER for anywhere as long as she’s been a vigilante.

Practically immobilized, earpiece discarded eliminating any option to call for backup‒ she’s right where he needs her to be.

Unwillingly, Remi’s mind begins to rack the dozens of different ways she could get taken out. If he was feeling forgiving enough, he could make things quick, crack open his barrier and slam her skull open against the ossified shell of it in an instant. 

Or maybe, more predictably, she’d find herself pinned between the unforgiving steel of his ability and the signature curl of his hand around her neck, nails digging into the pulse of her throat as her trachea steadily creased concave or her vertebrae snapped in half. She would suffocate in his ability in all of it’s glowing golden glory, and there wouldn’t be a single person in the premises that would hear the last of her strangled breaths stagger out of her body.

For a split second, watching the illumination of her white-hot lightning crackle against the pools of his irises, Remi thinks Arlo’ll do either one of those things, or both.

But he does something even worse. He steps backwards, the hue in his eyes dimming as he deactivates his aura channels.

Before the light fades completely, Remi catches an inexplicable emotion flit across his face in a flash, a contortion in his expression she would’ve missed altogether if she hadn’t been looking for it herself. 

It's like a sucker-punch to the gut.

She still continues to stare Arlo down as he rightens his posture and draws his sleeves deep into the pits of his pockets like he had just noticed the chill of the night crawling up their spines. His face shadows under the swoop of his hat and completely concealed, he’s just any identity-less authority figure she might face down with on the streets, void of personality and soul. 

If the quiver in his fingers betrays him as he pulls his mask back on, she turns a blind eye.

And when his silhouette disappears around the corner, Remi pretends it belongs to a woman with torches for talons, and talons for hands.

**Author's Note:**

> :)


End file.
